Are there useless majors?

<p>We might as well throw history out there.</p>

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Several world leaders, historical figures, and countless successful lawyers would disagree. Studying human past is the best way to learn how to best affect human future.</p>

<p>I take issue with the idea that the tired clich</p>

<p>Engineering majors are useless and only an idiot would pursue them. Only a moron would study engineering. Engineering is lame.</p>

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<p>Oh dear we got ourselves a ■■■■■.</p>

<p>You can’t prove anything.</p>

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<p>I completely agree, as it is necessary to learn from the myriad of problems that this world has had, but I do not see it being useful as a major, when only a handful of people are taking the necessary time to study it. It is up to ourselves to pick up a book and educate ourselves on these great historical events.</p>

<p>You can major in anything you want.</p>

<p>Both of my aunts were Home Economics majors and one ended up becoming Vice President of an electric company while the other ended up becoming a middle school science teacher. They both had successful careers.</p>

<p>anything other than business and engineering :)</p>

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Yeah, I’m always ****ed off whenever I see a doctor. Like “Where do you get off, having studied something so utterly useless to humanity, whilst others were studying important things like how to run a bank into the ground and get paid by the government for it?”</p>

<p>I’m going to go ahead and say art. </p>

<p>Why do students need to be taught how to make art? Isn’t art all about individual expression? If you do what another person tells you, it isn’t your art.</p>

<p>You don’t need an education to do it. You just need to be naturally skilled/talented.</p>

<p>I’ve seen some really oddball liberal arts majors that I can’t fathom a practical use for (mostly within the realm of postmodern anthropology) - gender identity studies, sexual identity studies, african american studies, and women’s studies come to mind. To me, these things just reek of academic elitism - you major in it, study it in grad school, and then teach it to someone else as a professor without ever actually contributing to society.</p>

<p>Does useless refer to money-making potential, or helping-humanity potential?</p>

<p>As far as money-making, sure some majors will be on average more lucrative than others. However, unmotivated and talent-lacking engineering majors will still not out-earn motivated and talented history majors.</p>

<p>As far as helping-humanity, cases can be made for and against just about everything. A lot of people view business/“financial engineering” as useless, for example. If you’re doing something that means something to you, chances are it won’t be “useless.”</p>

<p>Business majors can run a company into the ground, but it takes an engineer to utterly foul things up in a well-documented fashion.</p>

<p>Getting a job is SO much more than the degree you have, depending on what you want to do. If you want to be a lawyer, it really doesn’t matter what you major in, as long as you make sure you take the necessary pre-law courses that your college offers. Grad school/law school/med school is very objective - high GPA and high LSAT/MCAT/GRE/etc are what matter the most. Where you go to grad school/med school/law school also matters, more than undergrad, I’d argue. The most important thing is to have an idea of what you want to do with whatever degree you pursue, and make sure you keep your grades as high as possible and do what is necessary/make the necessary connections to get into a good grad/law/med school, as well as develop the skills to even DO the job. Being good at what you do is one of the other important factors…nobody cares if you went to Harvard law if you suck at being a lawyer, nobody cares if you went to Johns Hopkins med school but you screw up every operation you do or misdiagnose everything. Just my $0.02.</p>

<p>I’m going to go ahead and say art. </p>

<p>“Why do students need to be taught how to make art?”</p>

<p>So they Can increase their skills in the subject. It would probably be extremely difficult to learn industrial design/fashion design/architecture/interior design/graphic design/sculpture/painting without some form of instruction. To a certain degree drawing can be learned without schooling but being good at drawing alone wont get anyone success.</p>

<p>“Isn’t art all about individual expression?”</p>

<p>Thats one definition of art. There are at least 5 others and many of them are at odds with the “self expression” one. The most prevalent definion of art implies a degree of skill at a particular craft.</p>

<p>“If you do what another person tells you, it isn’t your art.”</p>

<p>Then the vast majority of everything up to modern art isnt art then? Art has been commission based for most of its history. Michaelangelo’s pieta wasnt built for free</p>

<p>“You don’t need an education to do it.”</p>

<p>All the artists/artisans/craftspersons/designers that studied under a single teacher or studied in an academy would disagree. Most artists studied from someone academically. Leonardo Da vinci didnt learn the subject by himself and only a few people (called outsider artists) are known to have become artists without formal training. The most popular being van gogh. And van Gogh sold only one painting his whole life. So…yeah.</p>

<p>“You just need to be naturally skilled/talented.” </p>

<p>You need alot more than natural skill to develop as an artist and saying you only need natural talent is a really outdated concept. People arent born artists any more than they are born physicists or lawyers. Saying art only takes talent is like saying math only takes talent. Both take hard work. Art is observation. You have to study and analyze the physical shape of an object before you can draw it.</p>

<p>^ Amen</p>

<p>^_^</p>

<p>All of you saying jorunalism, get the the heck out.
How do you think your news gets to you?</p>

<p>@Timkerdes</p>

<p>Actually, I took some classes from an artist who told me that she learned more from working on her own than at her art school.</p>

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<p>It gets to me when journalists produce it, not that it’s very valuable(most news media is worthless to the truly intelligent). It definitely doesn’t get to me when 19 year olds take classes about journalism.</p>

<p>@WhaleWhale
Not all art schools are as rigorous as others. Some of the most rigorous art schools not only require you to be in class Monday through Friday from 8am until the afternoon, but also assign you homework that keep you up past midnight.</p>

<p>Also art school programs are there to train its students in the foundations of their concentration/s. An art program is like any other academic program in the sense that you need to take lower division and upper division classes to really get to know your field and become more “skilled, or educated” in it. It’s not until after you finish your education that you are really allowed total creative freedom(if you can afford it).
Artists, like anyone in any field, grow with time. That could explain why your art teacher said she felt she learned more out of school. That or maybe your art teacher is the exception to the rule. Afterall you can’t expect a recent graduate from an undergrad Econ program to be at the skill level or understand econ at the level of someone who holds a phd in Econ. Obviously there are exceptions, but those are generally exceptions to the rule.</p>